One Piece loooooooot (and movies)
SQUEE. So like I said, nabbed the Viz manga box set covering East Blue and Alabasta for a really good price on Cyber Monday. Didn't open it up/"receive" it until Christmas though and I am basically flailingggggggg because the box is really nice and I love having the actual books in my hands and being able to flip around as I please. (I actually love the current official US translations for this series, with the mild exception of "Zolo", which I can live with. [Funimation subs "Zoro" though, not sure if they were worried about trademark issues for the print version, much like the whole Detective Conan franchise had to be renamed; frex I assume the Marines -> Navy thing has similar reasoning.]) WHen I look at older fansubs it's kind of ridiculous to see all the untranslated crap like "nakama" and "YOSH!", lmfao.
(I totally remember the wank over this, and have always been pro-localization re: subbing/scanlating, and pro-honorifics in specifically Japanese settings, and have been glad that this is the approach that's won out in the end thanks to official streaming rather than some of the seriously silly stuff that went down during the height of fansubbing.)
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Movies: Knowing how movies work for these huge franchises, I wasn't really interested in watching any. (I've seen 1-12 of the Conan movies and various movies for other big franchises that I'm not gonna admit to, and as I keep saying, they're basically CG fanservice vehicles. [with a broader definition of fanservice than what I usually mean, i.e. the movies are really designed to be crowdpleasers and to cater to the lowest denominator and can't really do much plot for fear of breaking canon.])
BUT I kept seeing recs for Strong World and Z (since Oda was heavily involved in both), and I did want to see the Alabasta adaptation if only for supposedly better animation, so I decided to check them out.
And well, though they're still basically high budget fanservice... One Piece does fanservice WELL.
1. Strong World: watched this one first because it has an official release and because I was hoping for more backstory tidbits (even if they would necessarily have to fall under the "semicanon" umbrella). Well, no backstory that isn't already revealed in the special Episode 0/prologue chapter that served as promo for the movie, but the story is pretty good and definitely feels like it could have been part of the main series, though I wish the emotional core didn't basically recycle bits of Arlong Park and Water 7. Still, I enjoyed it, every crew member gets their time in the spotlight, there are moments of serious badassery, and it features some of the best costume changes everrrr (I feel like the whole movie is just an excuse to dress everyone up in fancy formalwear, coz we are totally never going to see Luffy in a suit ever again XD).
Also I listened to the dub and it's actually pretty damn good. (Well no one can beat Japanese!Luffy, but the girls are gooooood and so are Brook and Franky~~) I will never stop being surprised by good dubs tbh even though I know, intellectually, that the state of dubbing has improved by leaps and bounds since the 90s ahahaha.
2. Film Z: WOW THE PRODUCTION VALUES FOR THIS MOVIE. If the whole series got reanimated with this kind of quality I think everyone would die of pure joy.
Um that said this one has less of a plot than Strong World (and fewer costume changes), and mostly just has ALL THE EPIC BATTLES. Well, to be fair, I really dig the premise (of the villain), I just don't think it was explored enough, and the plot they stuffed him into is pretty generic. I did like the ending though, and the OST (not the Avril Lavigne ED, though I did enjoy her cover of that one Nickelback song I've always hated because I never realized that it was the interpretation, not the song itself that I detested). And all the Marine cameos. And the hot springs fanservice. LOL
But the one funny thing about this movie is this one random moment in the middle that kinda made me start shipping Kuzan/Robin. Oops. (I ship Robin with pretty much everyone, granted. The Kuzan/Robin subtext just never seemed romantic until that one brief moment in the movie. XD)
3. Desert Princess & the Pirates: As rushed as all the story beats are, it's actually not a bad adaptation, considering they had to compress an entire arc into 1.5 hrs. (Besides who am I kidding, mostly watched this just for HQ Crocodile action. :P) They do a pretty good job of laying down the basic outline of the story (my mom, whom you might recall is the person who thought Thorin = Aragorn's dad or something, was actually able to follow along), and hit all or most of the key points, minus the Marines. (Poor Smoker, always getting shafted by supplementary material.) And the theme song is quite nice, and I appreciate that Vivi has the most screen time of all the characters.
It's kinda funny considering that the anime version of this arc really drags on with all the filler (though some of the filler is HILARIOUS and generally isn't terrible). Manga is still the best version of the story, but I do wish they'd made an OVA or something instead of a movie. That would have been so nice. *_*
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gigantic Persona 3 post still in the works. o_o Hopefully will post it before I post my year-end reflections.
comments at the original Dreamwidth post
(I totally remember the wank over this, and have always been pro-localization re: subbing/scanlating, and pro-honorifics in specifically Japanese settings, and have been glad that this is the approach that's won out in the end thanks to official streaming rather than some of the seriously silly stuff that went down during the height of fansubbing.)
- - -
Movies: Knowing how movies work for these huge franchises, I wasn't really interested in watching any. (I've seen 1-12 of the Conan movies and various movies for other big franchises that I'm not gonna admit to, and as I keep saying, they're basically CG fanservice vehicles. [with a broader definition of fanservice than what I usually mean, i.e. the movies are really designed to be crowdpleasers and to cater to the lowest denominator and can't really do much plot for fear of breaking canon.])
BUT I kept seeing recs for Strong World and Z (since Oda was heavily involved in both), and I did want to see the Alabasta adaptation if only for supposedly better animation, so I decided to check them out.
And well, though they're still basically high budget fanservice... One Piece does fanservice WELL.
1. Strong World: watched this one first because it has an official release and because I was hoping for more backstory tidbits (even if they would necessarily have to fall under the "semicanon" umbrella). Well, no backstory that isn't already revealed in the special Episode 0/prologue chapter that served as promo for the movie, but the story is pretty good and definitely feels like it could have been part of the main series, though I wish the emotional core didn't basically recycle bits of Arlong Park and Water 7. Still, I enjoyed it, every crew member gets their time in the spotlight, there are moments of serious badassery, and it features some of the best costume changes everrrr (I feel like the whole movie is just an excuse to dress everyone up in fancy formalwear, coz we are totally never going to see Luffy in a suit ever again XD).
Also I listened to the dub and it's actually pretty damn good. (Well no one can beat Japanese!Luffy, but the girls are gooooood and so are Brook and Franky~~) I will never stop being surprised by good dubs tbh even though I know, intellectually, that the state of dubbing has improved by leaps and bounds since the 90s ahahaha.
2. Film Z: WOW THE PRODUCTION VALUES FOR THIS MOVIE. If the whole series got reanimated with this kind of quality I think everyone would die of pure joy.
Um that said this one has less of a plot than Strong World (and fewer costume changes), and mostly just has ALL THE EPIC BATTLES. Well, to be fair, I really dig the premise (of the villain), I just don't think it was explored enough, and the plot they stuffed him into is pretty generic. I did like the ending though, and the OST (not the Avril Lavigne ED, though I did enjoy her cover of that one Nickelback song I've always hated because I never realized that it was the interpretation, not the song itself that I detested). And all the Marine cameos. And the hot springs fanservice. LOL
But the one funny thing about this movie is this one random moment in the middle that kinda made me start shipping Kuzan/Robin. Oops. (I ship Robin with pretty much everyone, granted. The Kuzan/Robin subtext just never seemed romantic until that one brief moment in the movie. XD)
3. Desert Princess & the Pirates: As rushed as all the story beats are, it's actually not a bad adaptation, considering they had to compress an entire arc into 1.5 hrs. (Besides who am I kidding, mostly watched this just for HQ Crocodile action. :P) They do a pretty good job of laying down the basic outline of the story (my mom, whom you might recall is the person who thought Thorin = Aragorn's dad or something, was actually able to follow along), and hit all or most of the key points, minus the Marines. (Poor Smoker, always getting shafted by supplementary material.) And the theme song is quite nice, and I appreciate that Vivi has the most screen time of all the characters.
It's kinda funny considering that the anime version of this arc really drags on with all the filler (though some of the filler is HILARIOUS and generally isn't terrible). Manga is still the best version of the story, but I do wish they'd made an OVA or something instead of a movie. That would have been so nice. *_*
- - -
gigantic Persona 3 post still in the works. o_o Hopefully will post it before I post my year-end reflections.
comments at the original Dreamwidth post